GarageBand for iPad: guitar amps hands-on

21st Mar 2011 | 16:46

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GarageBand for iPad hands-on

With the UK release of the iPad 2 just hours away, it's time to take another look at the app that's already causing a huge buzz amongst music-making iPad 1 owners. We've already presented a hands-on review of GarageBand for iPad, now it's time to zoom in and take a guitarist's eye view of the onboard guitar amps.

For demo purposes, we threw together a simple little ditty using nothing more than a Gibson Les Paul Studio '60s Tribute guitar and sounds from within GarageBand itself. As you can see from the session file, it's not exactly Bohemian Rhapsody, but in addition to some lead and rhythm guitar, we used a drum loop, a shaker, some Smart Bass and the Soul Organ keyboard preset.

For each of the following examples, all that changes is the virtual guitar amp selected for the lead and rhythm sounds, with a little additional tweaking of gain and EQ levels to taste. The only exception is the Modern Stack amp model, which we felt deserved its own, more aggressive composition in order to do it justice.